Yinya Liu’s ‘Neo-Confucian Theory on the Self–Other Relationship: Rethinking the Concept of Responsibility’ explores self–other relationships through an investigation of the ethical structure of responsibility. Both Neo- Confucian theories of self-cultivation and Levinas’s theories on the role of the ‘other’ were used to analyse the topic from a cross-cultural comparative perspective. The author points out the awakening of a primordial awareness of subjectivity as responsibility before the other, for the other and towards the other.
Different understandings of what constitutes the subjectivity of the subject and the alterity of the other enhance, rather than diminish, the understanding of responsibility and the other in both Western and Chinese thought. They concluded that the extension of the self-centre emphasises the role of responsibility in human relatedness. In the context of globalisation, this ethical structure of responsibility will enhance the understanding of one’s own culture and the others’ culture, responsibly.
Since the end of the Second World War, political ideology has become one of the most important factors in conflicts between Asian countries and, hence, in the continuously transformation of the geopolitical map of Asia. Gwang Ok and Karam Lee’s chapter on ‘Ideological Conflict and Communication in Sport between the Two Koreas’ explores the divided history of the two Koreas, which came about as a result of ideological differences.